The 3 Most underpaid players on the Cleveland Guardians

Jose Ramirez, 3B

Jose Ramirez is responsible for the largest portion of Cleveland's payroll, taking home $17 million a year. That might sound like a lot, and you may think that anyone getting paid $17 million a year to do anything would qualify as being overpaid, but hear me out -- Ramirez has been Cleveland's franchise face and superstar for almost a decade now, and has done some remarkable things on the field in that time. 

First of all, Jose Ramirez gets on base. He has a career OBP of .355, and he does not go down swinging much, either. His walk-to-strikeout ratio (BB/K) is 0.85, which is incredible. Also, since signing his record-breaking extension in 2022, he has hit a total of 53 home runs, scored 177 runs, and raked in 206 RBIs, numbers that are all near or in the top percentile of major league baseball. 

Since ‘22, Ramirez’s wRC+ (an advanced sabermetric used to calculate the number of runs a player creates, accounting for external factors) is 132, which ranks 17th in all of baseball. Some players making more money than Ramirez who have significantly lower wRC+’s are Nolan Arendado (128), Xander Bogaerts (126), Trea Turner (118), Carlos Correa (118), and Christian Yelich (116).

That list can go on and on, but my point is the value Jose Ramirez brings to Cleveland could very well be worth much more than $17 million a year.